


Why the Earth goes round the Sun

by Valxyri



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Astrophysics, Drugs, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-21
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-26 09:17:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/649011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valxyri/pseuds/Valxyri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>but wouldn't it be curious if they ended up being best friends?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

(three years after the fall)  
The two hundred block of Baker Street gleamed with reflected traffic signals, puddles in the gutters and beaded droplets on the windshields of the parked cars were the only testament to the passing summer storm. It was late but the moon had yet to rise and the only illumination came from a fading florescent street light, a flickering, mournful green.   
Only one window in the whole bank of neat, upper class row homes showed any sign of life. Far away in the darkness beyond the reach of the lamp, the yellow rectangle was interrupted by a mournful silhouette, thin arms leaned on the window in thought, peering, thinking, studying the stars, and waiting for John Watson to return.   
The nocturnal peace was disturbed for a long time by nothing but a cackling bird. The fresh smell of night and summer and ozone clung in the cool air, the figure at the window did not move.   
When the silence was finally broken it was not in violence. Like an actor who silently parts the curtain, looks into the spotlight and begins the play, a man appears from the shadows.   
First came his footsteps crunching in bits of gravel on the sidewalk, then a steadying hand landing on the hood of a stranger’s car, then labored breathing. He staggers into the circle of effulgent green.   
He half fell against the cement base of the streetlight, sucking in breath through his nostrils, cradling his left arm, and pushing his right hand under his jacket. He leaned his head back against the metal pole, breathing evenly and deliberately and quite obviously in pain. His hair had been bleached at some point and was now showing two inches of roots, his skin looked gaunt under the sickly spread of florescence and he was a bit more underweight than usual. A black bruise was rising above his left cheekbone; the blow responsible for it had popped a blood vessel in his eye, staining the cornea a violent red.   
He breathed and took stock of his injuries.   
His wrist was broken, not too badly, radial fracture, made his left hand useless, John could set it, but alone he couldn’t seem to manage that level of dexterity through the blinding pain.  
A bloom of warm, sticky, red flowing from his side where a three inch pocket knife had jutted out and stuck between his ribs. The gash was not deep enough to penetrate his intercostals, but it HURT, causing the left side of his body to spasm with pain every time he breathed.  
One hundred more feet, he thought, looking up at the window of 221b. A shaded figure leaned in vague silhouette, behind the window. About five foot six, but too stiff and too thin. John?  
He needed more data; Sherlock grunted as he stood again and began that final journey back to his old front door.   
Sherlock patiently rehearsed his practiced greeting, hi, John, believe it or not, I’m alive, and I’m sorry for faking my own death but I really had no choice in the matter. He would offer his most convincing smile and in return john Watson would offer emergency medical care, he would set his arm, make tea and be delighted at his friend’s return to full health.  
That was how people worked right? It seemed a logical emotional reaction. Sherlock blinked furiously in a vain attempt to conjure up tears.   
The figure had disappeared by the time Sherlock pulled his trembling body up to the old familiar door. The row of softly glowing buttons for apartments A through D clicked softly as he squinted to read in the darkness.   
WATSON said a brand new tag beside apartment B in bright, militant capitols, handwriting unmistakable as Johns. Sherlock sighed and leaned on the door. He had left his old keying with his coat and his cell phone on a cadaver in Saint Bart’s. He fumbled in his coat pocket for a bobby pin and a paperclip which he bent straight in his teeth. Leaning against the door he carefully inserted his makeshift lock pick set and listening, concentrating, tried to force the lock. But his one operational hand was clumsy and slick with blood and he cursed under his breath the third time he dropped the bobby pin.  
Which was exactly when the door opened.   
Sherlock fell forward with a grunt of pain, palms flat on the familiar hall rug. He heard the unmistakable sound of a gun cocking behind his head.   
“Who the Fuck are you?”   
\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
The woman pronounced the word “Fuck” in the way that only a native Scott could manage, but under that, he ran her voice through a regional linguistics program in his head, something else? …something?  
“Tell me what the fuck you want or I call the police.”  
Ah! Florida.   
“I’m looking for Doctor John Watson.” Sherlock pushed himself up onto his good elbow with a grunt of pain. He let his eyes drift upwards to a pair of women’s feet. Pink toenail polish, tasteful, self applied, no calluses, good arches, wore closed toed flats to work, shaved ankles, a shade darker than her bony feet, skirt then, that limited her to some professional job. Pale green scrubs, loose, but not too long, John’s. He breathed in the scent of antiseptic and chalk, Oxford university t-shirt, old, and cut for a woman’s figure, clearly her own.   
He looked up finally into her face, her thick auburn hair was piled messily behind her head and little, half moon spectacles sat patiently on her nose. There was a ring on the hand holding the gun, about a year old, fastidiously polished.  
“He’s at work.” she informed Sherlock dropping the gun a bit as he leaned his battered body against the doorframe.   
“Perfect.” Sherlock sighed.  
“so what you doing breaking into our fla’?”   
“I’m an old friend, he wouldn’t mind.” Sherlock waved a hand impatiently; it came away from his side bloody.  
“Oh, you’re hurt.” She noticed with sympathy in her voice, he heard the safety click on, and she was kneeling, peering at his one demonically red grey eye.   
“Can’t go to a hospital,” he admitted shakily, “I was hoping the good doctor cold lend a hand.” Sherlock offered his most charming grimace which seemed to have the intended effect on the woman.  
“I’ll give him a ring, he’s on call tonight, but I have a feeling…”  
“It wasn’t the entrance I had planned.”  
“No,” she tapped her phone twice, speed dial.  
It rang five times, the gun tapping impatiently against Mary’s thigh.   
This is Doctor John Watson’s Mobile, leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.   
BEEEEEEP  
Mary disconnected the call.  
She looked down at Sherlock for a long, thoughtful moment, holding the pistol in one hand and the iphone in the other. She sent a brief text with practiced fingers and turned off the screen.  
“Come on, then,” she said smiling through sleepy eyes, “upstairs with you.”  
“You just let me…” Sherlock struggled to stand, “in?”  
She smiled with terrifying confidence, “I have a gun, and you have a broken arm.”  
“Sherlock Holmes.” He grimaced down at her, he wanted to offer a hand but didn’t.  
“Doctor Mary Watson, and aren’t you meant to be dead?” she regarded him carefully as he staggered past her and up the familiar stairs.   
“Meant to be.” He leaned on the banister.  
“According to my husband.” She seemed to see this inconsistency as some promising, if elusive new data.  
“Well… I’m… not.” He gasped as he struggled up the last step, leaning on the wall as Mary opened the door.   
The living room of his old home was a comfortable and warm as ever. Except somehow completely different. There were touches of femininity here and there; a guitar lay across the couch and a beautiful telescope, longer than his arm aimed out the window over the London night. The pile of paper which had once been case notes and police reports and libraries of criminological history were now the great intellectual mechanics of Mary’s PHD thesis. The wall had been repaired where Sherlock had once vandalized it and in place of the yellow grin hung a diploma in a tasteful gold frame.   
“Doctor of cosmology and astrophysics.” Sherlock wrinkled his nose in distaste and moved to collapse onto the familiar sofa which Mary hastily cleared of a pile of books and a silver laptop.   
“John had it framed,” she smiled bashfully up at the wall as she ran to the dryer and grabbed a clean towel. Returning she dropped beside the man who had been little but a myth vive minutes prior and helped him to remove his coat. He gasped in pain as she slid his broken limb from the sleeve. His hand was turned a bit farther than it should have been able to and normally graceful fingers were swollen and curled uselessly against his palm.  
“I’ll get you some ice.” She touched Sherlock’s knee with concerned affection, handing him the towel for the cut on his side. “Just try to keep it still until John gets home.”   
“Thank you,” he tucked the towel under his arm, then leaned back and watched her through one red eye. She moved around Baker Street with as much confidence and familiarity as he ever had, ducking into the freezer for a bag of frozen peas, which Sherlock gratefully accepted. Peeking idly into her telescope as she passed, opening a cupboard in the darkened kitchen and blindly retrieving two glasses.   
“I’d always been disappointed that I hadn’t met you, you know?” she said on her return from the kitchen, “John’s stories are just so marvelous.”  
“Sorry if I’m not at my most brilliant.” Sherlock grunted, crossing long legs on the coffee table.  
“Tea or whiskey?”  
“God! Whiskey.” He breathed out, he hadn’t chemically indulged in weeks and the thought of surrendering the tremendous weight of his brain to the will of alcohol was heavenly, besides, he rationalized, his arm really hurt.  
Mary moved with alacrity and precision, pushing a sparkling crystal tumbler into his good hand.  
“So you really are Scottish then?” Sherlock eyed the glass as if it was evidence of this.  
“Don’t tell John.” She ordered, “Apparently it’s Harry’s drink.” She raised her eyebrows scandalously.  
“When did I ever do what John Watson said?” Sherlock swilled the scotch in his mouth savoring the warmth in his stomach, staring up at the familiar ceiling.   
She laughed and moved the guitar. “You’re lucky that tonight’s the best view of Saturn we’ll get for years or I wouldn’t still be up waiting for the clouds to clear.” She craned her neck to see out the window. “I like to do a bit of celestial photography, it’s not exactly amateur anymore.” She smiled and picked up her buzzing phone.   
“John, love? … no… no… it’s not a terribly big emergency … it’s an old friend of your’s… yes … yes love I know what time it is … look … john … he needs a doctor … no … he says hospitals won’t do … I’m not sure …” she frowned at Sherlock, biting her lip as she listened to her husband rant, “john… he said his name is Sherlock Holmes.” John’s reaction was one of anger, and then the line went dead. Mary sucked her teeth and drained her glass.   
“He’ll be home in twenty minutes.” She smiled, looking at Sherlock through the bottom of the tumbler. “So, are all the stories true then?”   
“I wouldn’t take Doctor Watson’s prose as entirely factual, no.”  
“So you can’t really do the thing?”   
Sherlock smirked, eyes shut, crystal tumbler rolling on one thigh. “you’re not a natural ginger, you were born in Perth, lower middle class, you were previously married but it ended badly, he left you, you lived in America for at least ten years, you took four years to finish your Phd, not record time, you just came back from Switzerland probably for your honey moon, delayed until after your thesis presentation, john wanted to go skiing but you just wanted to visit the large hadron collider. John knows about the marijuana habit and you know about his asphyxiaphilia.”  
Mary blushed and pulled the collar of her shirt up a bit.  
“Oh and you like it.”  
“How’d you guess about the pot?”  
“the callous on your thumb is obviously from a disposable lighter, cigarette smokers usually hold it over hand, you only get that mark from smoking a bowl on a regular basis,” Sherlock sighed impatiently, pressing the cool glass to his bruised orbit, “my only question… why astrophysics?” he pronounced the word like it was a venereal disease.   
Mary smiled shyly, pulling her socked feet up towards her bum and leaning dreamily against the back of the sofa. Out the window and four hundred and seventy six million miles away Saturn gleamed in the clearing night sky, “I’ve always wanted to know why the Earth goes round the Sun.”


	2. Chapter 2

John Watson watched the light of Saturn blink in and out of view between tree branches and buildings, he imagined he could see the distant rings pulling the spot of light into a soft oval, gleaming hazily through thin wisps of fleeing clouds. Worry creased his brow, thoughts of an old friend, a face reduced to photographs, forever two dimensional, a life so different from the one he had now.

He was exhausted from a twelve hour shift in A&E, his face was drawn and his shoulder throbbed. He had taken two codeine before he had left, they weren't working.

Two car accidents, two gunshot wounds, one self inflicted, four homeless, one overdose, a pregnant woman with abdominal pains who had miscarried in the ambulance, a sixteen year old with appendicitis, a twenty four year old chain smoker, two heart attacks, a broken arm, a stab wound and a motorcyclist who would never walk again. Seven deaths.

All John wanted to do was to sit down on his own familiar toilet, scrub the reek of disease out of his skin, and curl up beside the woman of his dreams.

Mary made him look up when he felt as if he had been looking down all his life. She made the world not boring. The universe was her canvas and she painted with plasma and distant points of light.

The shifting, regular patterns of traffic lights slid over the interior of the cab. John leaned into the place where the seat met the door one foot twitching as he watched London drift by in the sleepy three AM haze. He was still wearing green hospital scrubs under his short leather jacket, they smelled of sick. His phone rotated slowly in his fingers, trained to be steady under pressure. His wife's strange phone call still echoed in his head.

Mary was at home alone with a stranger. John's breath caught in the sudden realization and he shifted uneasily in his seat. Someone who claimed the identity of a dead man. For what purpose? What twisted machination inspired this deceit?

When you have eliminated the impossible… a familiar voice began but John shook it aside. He sat forward as he recognized the yellow awning of the Chinese place at the end of Baker Street.

He shoved some bills at the Cab driver and got out into the middle of the abandoned road, pavement still reflective with rain.

Light from the living room was bright against the curtains. In the still of the night voices could be heard through the open window; his wife's musical giggles and that crisp, baritone paragon of the Queen's English, a voice he hasn't heard for three years.

John makes for the front stoop and stops to grab a brown paper package from the stairs before unlocking the door. The voices are clear in the entrance hall. The door at the top of the stairs casts a warm glow on the wall of the landing.

"The landlady cut us a deal," Mary was saying, "A few years back her last tenant threw himself off a roof." Laughter, familiar laughter, the sound of home and adventure, and… "she didn't have the heart to make John leave if he couldn't pay it on his own."

"Does he still do that thing where he just walks out of the room when you're talking to him and when he gets back he just pretends he was keeping up with the conversation?" John freezes, hand white on the banister, he is suddenly terribly aware of the slow passage of time.

"Constantly! And it's like he waits for exactly the most crucial moment to decide to take the trash out."

"Or eat."

"He is very fond of it."

"Ooh, has he gotten fat?" there's a delighted sneer in Sherlock's voice. Sherlock's voice.

John, with the grace of inevitability, unlocks the door.

"I look out for him; keep Capitan Watson in fighting condition."

"Excellent!" a pause, "I'm going to need him to…" John pushes the door ajar, "keep up." He takes a calming breath and opens it all the way.

And there they sit.

Like teenage girls at a slumber party. Laughing and drinking, chatting like old friends.

Sherlock's long legs are stretched out on the coffee table, a bag of frozen peas drapes one arm, blonde tipped curls splash across the back of the couch. Pallid eyes fixed through the open door.

Mary turns from her perch on the arm of the sofa, a congenial light in her eyes, a crystal glass pressed to her chest.

"Hello John." They both say, as if choreographed.

John's hand goes to his face, he falls heavily against the door frame and for a moment he's not sure whether to faint, or cry or be sick. He wills for the passage of time to stop, he wants to wake up, to pass out, to be anything but here. But when he opens his eyes Mary is setting down her glass on the coffee table and Sherlock is looking fascinated by his reaction. His eyes are blank, curious, analytical and emotionless. And that's what breaks the spell.

He pushes past his wife with a flurry of rough hands. Sherlock's expression changes from curiosity to confusion to trepidation as the diminutive army doctor lunges at him.

Sherlock barely has time to scramble his long legs over the back of the sofa before John has him by the lapels and his back is pushed against the wall.

Sherlock has no mental software to deal with these kinds of emotions. As john pushes his back against the hideous wallpaper he is sharply reminded of the recent damage done to his body, his eyes water with pain as his damaged limb is jarred, the blackened one stings mercilessly.

The look in his friends face is one of rage and betrayal and Sherlock wonders if he can be heartbroken.

Sherlock freezes, curling his arms into his ribs, there are involuntary tears of physical pain in his eyes.

"John." Mary comes up behind him, touching one shoulder blade in an expression of comfort.

"YOU WERE DEAD!" John shouts, clutching the expensive wool of his jacket.

Sherlock's lips part, his eyes dart in a desperate search for evidence in his friend's face, finding nothing there they move plaintively to Mary.

"John." She repeats.

"WHAT THE FUCK?" He shakes the taller man angrily Sherlock's eyes close in pain. He waits for an answer. Mary's hands are pulling John away, Sherlock sinks to the ground breathing raggedly between gritted teeth.

"Calm down." She orders, fingers rubbing her husband's shoulders.

"Jeeesus Christ! Sherlock?" he moans, leaning back against Mary. He looks down at the consulting detective, a pile of fine, dark textiles and long limbs.

But instead of explaining anything, Sherlock merely laughs, "once again, dear John you see but you don't observe."

"Observe what?" john demands, ignoring Mary's comforting hands hooked over his shoulders.

"my arm's broken."


	3. Chapter 3

A dead man‘s hands look no different from a living man‘s. The fingers curl inward, cupping softly onto air, fingertips touching, nails manicured, palm creased and all that ashen shade of pallor, like the hands of a marble statue. The tendons fasten to the phalanges like ropes around pulleys and the skin stretches tight enough that, on a thin man, it doesn’t sag, or lose the form of life. An engineered bundle of tiny bones and white threads, stitching knuckles to palm, to carpus, to phalanges. A perfect machine, so elegantly balanced that even after death, the chords in the wrist and the palms and the forearms, will still pull the fingers inward, so very like a living thing, to wrap around the world, to touch.  
The feet will lose their weight bearing architecture, the stomach slumps, or bloats, the thighs bow under gravity’s cruel weight on flaccid meat, the genitals shrivel and the features lose all expression, eyes glazed to a dry finish like eggshells, skin, hanging down in folded ridges, lips pulled flat against teeth.   
Every part of him dies, every cell, deprived of oxygen, will toxify and self destruct. Every organ will cease to perform its required function. Every muscle will fall slack, everything changes, except for the hands, which just - stop - moving.   
John Watson held a dead man’s hand between his own. Knees touching braced for better leverage in the space between the coffee table and the couch. He couldn’t help but study the lines in his palm, couldn’t ignore the weight of utter confusion which those shifting sinews inspired. The soft white skin was pocked with old acid burns and new dirt.   
Sherlock would have known exactly where it came from – his brain supplied before his eyes could catch up, he looked up at his old friend’s pained expression, still not ready to believe the evidence of his senses.   
“It’s not broken. It’s just dislocated.” John carefully tested Sherlock’s wrist, articulating the delicate carpal bones, testing the workings of his anatomy with trained hands.  
“It feels broken!” Sherlock threw his head back into the couch cushions, the tendons in his neck stiff with discomfort, his bare chest rose and fell under the neat white dressing put in place by his doctor.  
“If it was broken you would be screaming with me holding it like this.”   
“I have very high pain toler-AH!” Sherlock kicked out one foot into the leg of the coffee table, the shift in pressure came out of nowhere.   
“No, you don’t” The doctor’s able hands wrapped around Sherlock’s wrist, bracing his weight against the edge of the couch and pulling back until he felt the sluggish crunch of bones sliding back into place.  
“Bloody fu-” Sherlock hissed in through his teeth. “No count down or anything?”  
“It’s easier if you don’t know it’s coming,” John carefully pressed his friend’s limb between his knees to keep the bones in place while he prepared a splint and a long tan bandage. “Of course it’s also easier if I had a local and an x ray.” Sherlock let his fingers fall against the inside of John’s wrist as he masterfully bound the limb.   
Sixty eight beats per minute, eyes slightly dilated, but then it’s dark. He’s enjoying this.  
“You’re being intentionally cruel.” Sherlock observed, knitting his brow.  
“I can’t imagine why.” He looked Sherlock dead in the eye and there was no spark of warmth in his aspect.  
Sherlock’s shoulders drew inward, his whole body moving imperceptibly to protect the freshly bandaged wrist. He tried to speak but the words wouldn’t join together into a sentence. There was something he was forgetting, missing, something he just, couldn’t quite…  
“Your shirt’s all ruined,” Mary announced, appearing at the bottom of the stairs. “I thought you could wear one of John’s.” She held out one of four grey RAMC shirts which Sherlock remembered fondly. John looked up at her and the lines melted from his face at the sight of her.   
“And I thought this would work as a sling.” She held up a flowery scarf which might have once belonged to Mrs. Hudson.  
“You don’t have one?” Sherlock asked, genuinely surprised.  
“No, because normal people don’t regularly have to set bones in their living room, they actually have this special place you can go, where someone else, does it for you.” He moved his hands in sarcastic little circles.  
Sherlock looked fixedly at a spot of light on the brass detailing of the coffee table, “My Brother...” he and Mycroft had fought, over this, over John, they had fought over Mycroft’s chilling calculation and the long slow soak of loneliness that was turning Sherlock back into a defective, recalcitrant teenager.   
“You should just come by the hospital next time.”   
“I will.” Sherlock’s voice was mechanical; he fought desperately to keep the twitch of emotion out of his cheek. Only slightly aware of Mary’s weight depressing the cushion beside him, he stared and stared at that point of light on the little piece of brass on the corner of the table, a foot to the left of John.   
“You can sleep on the couch tonight.” Mary smiled, looking to her husband to inform him that this was nonnegotiable. John caught Sherlock’s eyes as they flickered to the dark door of his old bedroom.  
“Well we didn’t bloody keep your bed.” John said, standing up and stretching. He watched coolly as Sherlock struggled into the oversized t-shirt.  
“It’s my office,” Mary informed Sherlock, guiding the fabric over his injured arm. “John calls it the laboratory; unfortunately you can’t see Saturn from the window right now so I had to take the telescope out here.”  
“I… am going to bed.” John sighed, frowning down at Sherlock with an unreadable expression, “Coming?” he smiled at his wife.  
“I’ll be a minute, just a few things I have to finish.” John sighed and turned towards the stairs.  
“John…” Sherlock said finally, breaking his silence.  
“What?” he demanded, folding his arms aggressively, “what do you want?”  
“Nothing.”  
John slapped the door jamb with one open hand. “Nothing? Nothing! No apologies, no thanks, no warning, you just break into MY home at three in the fucking morning. Terrify my wife, my family. Call me off work. I have another shift in ten hours and if I don’t sleep people could die. But you wouldn’t fucking care about them. You don’t have friends; you don’t have any idea what it’s like to see someone you care about take their own life while they make you watch! Empathy, Sherlock, can’t you even pretend to care?” silence, “And… and when you appear out of thin air, alive, you can’t even summon the enthusiasm for an apology. You dragged me through hell. I mourned you! Do you even comprehend that?”  
The spot of light on the table really was very pretty, polished and new and yellow in the artificial florescence. John’s anger rushed over Sherlock and he could do nothing but stare. There was a mark from a rubber boot heel, two thousand four, Nike, four feet from the wall. There was a stain of what looked like wine on the carpet, ninety eight, merlot, it was new but the dark orange patch of yellow beside it was his, two thousand ten, iodine. John’s scrubs were dirty around the cuffs from walking in the wet. Sherlock’s ears were ringing, his throat seemed to have closed off the air from his vocal chords and he couldn’t say anything.   
“Whatever,” Sherlock heard the huff of exasperation, saw the wide spreading hands, and he heard feet on stairs and a door slamming above him.  
He sat there, completely still, feeling. “That wasn’t very good.” Mary cringed, her sudden protectiveness was nice, if unasked for.   
Sherlock managed a weak smile, “I saved his life.” He breathed through the tight fingers of his one good hand. Not sure whether to welcome the soft, comforting touch of the woman’s fingers up and down his back.   
She leaned over to catch Sherlock’s eye, when they focused on her they saw everything, she felt dissected and in some otherworldly way she understood his confusion, “You wanna go smoke weed about it?”


End file.
